Outraged, I wrote an op-ed, which went viral online. Before we knew, letters of support were flying in to my family from across Cyprus.

For the next four years, our little activist group (with my mother in the frontlines) helped to revolutionize the conversation around disability in the Turkish Cypriot community. We even successfully lobbied for the authorities to pass the UN Convention on Disability Rights.

Not all my efforts in life have paid off as much, so I’ve often thought about this experience. What made us successful?

I think, for all our creative and hard work, it was something unplanned: the story of my mother, humiliated at a voting booth, surrounded by people who had assumed she wasn’t even coming, like she didn’t have a voice.

Years later, my mother poses for my camera at the school where she tried to vote and could not. (Photo: Mehmet Erdoğan)

As the conversation gained momentum, I took to Facebook to write regularly about my mother’s struggle, about the struggle of my father taking care of her, and about the struggle of myself growing up around her “disability”.

I found that the more I told my mother’s story, the more people were willing to chip in. They liked, commented and shared; some came to the protest; many signed the petition.

Huge crowds turn out to make noise in the capital city of Nicosia; my mother is all smiles. (Photos: Evrim Benzetsel)

Here’s what I learned. If we want people to pay attention to our work, we need to tell more stories, and we need to tell them better.

YOU CAN’T FAKE “PERSONAL” — THAT’S WHY IT WORKS

Which is why, seven years later, the questions I asked instinctually around my mother’s winning disability campaign I now ask every single day at UNDP Europe and Central Asia regional hub as a communications professional.

What matters about this work? (What do I want people to walk away with?)

What is the human element? What is universal about it? (What are my resources, what should I amplify?)

In Eastern Ukraine with new friend (left); In rural Tajikistan meeting people whose lives have been impacted by UNDP’s work (center and right)

THE (HOPELESS?) CASE OF #GLOBALDEV

International development organizations aren’t exactly known for their terrific marketing skills.

We tend to be fatalistically naïve and idealistic.

We assume people will come just because we’ve built it. We think people will read our reports because we’ve published them, that people will read our blogs because we wrote them.